Net neutrality looks doomed in Europe before it even gets started

Here come more leaks, and more reasons to suspect that the European Union is not going to get the hard-won net neutrality law it seemed likely to get just months ago.

After last week’s letter from new European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to his commissioners, suggesting that former digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes’s “Telecom Package” will be pulled and started again as a “Digital Single Market Package”, digital rights group EDRi has published documents that appear to show the neutering of that legislative package’s net neutrality provisions.

A quick recap on how this all works: Commissioner Kroes came up with the Telecom Package, which also proposed the abolition of intra-EU roaming fees and the harmonization of radio spectrum across the union. The package then went to the European Parliament, which strengthened the net neutrality provisions by giving strong definitions to both the term “net neutrality” and the kinds of…